Book Reviews

I thought this was absolutely dreadful. Not just the worst book I have ever read, although there are a few candidates for that, but I can’t see how anyone can actually think it’s a novel at all, let alone a good one.

It gets three and bit stars on Goodreads, so some people obviously like it, but reading their reviews didn’t help me much. One said, presumably as a compliment, that Ballard didn’t waste time developing three-dimensional characters. [Read more…] about Millennium People by JG Ballard

I am not impressed by books that win prizes and I’d like to think Joseph Pulitzer, Alfred Nobel and Mr Booker would agree with me. When these awards started, I’m sure they the founders had the best of intentions: to recognise and reward the best books and writers.

I take the view that if you are going to read a book, you may as well read the best. You are not going to be able to read all the books in the world in your life, so try to stick to the ones worth reading.

They don’t call them classics for nothing.

The reason I hadn’t read Middlemarch, or anything by George Eliot before, is summed up in its subtitle: ‘A Study in Provincial Life’. An ancient Victorian novel set in the Midlands in which the themes include the Great Reform Act of 1832, unhappy marriages and complicated inheritances? It’s not going to knock ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ off the best-sellers’ list, is it?